no graceful child
by faithunbreakable
Summary: John Watson will never be a mother. Genderswap. Sequel to 'heart in hand  if you stumble you'll drop it .


Disclaimer: I don't own Sherlock.

Series: Sequel to my other Sherlock fic _heart in hand (if you stumble you'll drop it)_

A/N: My reaction to some genderswap fics I read that had Sherlock and John reproducing. Also, Amusewithaview and I had a few interesting conversations about the subject recently, so she's to blame, too. Actually, she's to blame for way too much of what I write. ;-P

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**no graceful child**

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She is in her underwear, hair still damp from the shower, puttering around the cluttered bathroom. She has hours left until she needs to be at work, but sleep has proven elusive since she woke around five, nightmares and memories.

She could have gone to find Sherlock and let him prattle at her about the latest case, she figures, but she's not up to dealing with him after the night she's had. Not anyone, really, but especially not anyone as high maintenance as him.

They've known each other for a couple of years now, long enough to stop compulsively picking at each others' scabs, but some days he still grates on her like the feel of a scalpel hitting bone.

So she putters around the bathroom in her best imitation of Sherlock's avoidant nature, stuffing her few cosmetics into the little bag they belong in, unclogging the drains and putting that one weird experiment to the very back of the shelf under the sink. She thinks it's something about mould and really, really doesn't want it close to the things she puts in her face and mouth.

Speaking of. She brushes her teeth next, then blow dries her hair because it's chilly and wet out. It's always chilly and wet out, mind, but after last week's tumble into the Thames, she'd rather not tempt fate. Never mind that wet hair increasing the chances of catching a cold is a myth and John, as a doctor, should know better. Still, sometimes holding on to these little lies, these rituals left over from a mundane childhood in the country, helps her keep her mind straight and her life neat.

Helps her survive the chaos her flatmate regularly introduces her to.

(Helps her pretend that she likes order better than the utter mayhem that follows them around wherever they go.)

She is putting away the supplies for her just-passed monthlies with a sigh of relief when the door opens. Sherlock slips in without letting out the humid heat, closes the door behind him and leans against it. She considers snapping at him for invading the bathroom while she's clearly using it, but she might as well talk to a brick wall. Sherlock knows all these things, the shoulds and shouldn'ts and when he chooses to ignore them, her being snippy isn't going to make him back off.

So she puts the box away where it belongs and straightens, looking at him in the mirror. His shirt and trousers are rumpled, so he probably fell asleep at the kitchen table again. He's going to have a hunch back by the time he's forty.

For a minute they stare, him rumpled and sprawled against the door, beautiful in a way that makes her angry sometimes, still, and her half naked and worn out from a night of dead men in the sand.

Finally he nods towards the neat little box she just cleared away. "You're relieved it's over."

What in God's name is he getting at now? She sighs again, a bit louder this time, a bit more pointedly. _Leave me alone_. Or maybe _this is private_, but he's standing in the bathroom with her in her underwear and he more or less lives inside her head, so 'private' is really a relative term.

He doesn't budge. "Course," she finds herself saying, standing still in front of the sink. "I don't think there's a woman on the planet who likes it."

"It's a sign of a fertile, healthy body."

She hates it when he sounds like National Geographic, when he packs the dirty, gritty, ugly, annoying facts of life into neat words and phrases, sterilizes them and makes them harmless. It makes her feel dumb every single time because she can't let them be harmless, can't not react to the things he tucks away so neatly.

"Fertile?" She laughs. "Do I look like I'm going to ever use that fertility, Sherlock?"

She's heading toward the wrong side of forty, a war veteran and sometimes cripple, living with a self-proclaimed sociopath who's only happy when there are bodies on the ground.

"You could," he points out. "There are many men out there who would sleep with you." He's misunderstanding her utterly and this is one of those times where she's not sure he's doing it on purpose because when it comes to relationships and sex, he is sometimes spectacularly dense. No. Not dense. It's the wrong word. Clueless, maybe. Inexperienced. But that implies a desire to grow more experienced and Sherlock does not have that.

"Sleep, yes," she allowed anyway. "But not raise a child with. And anyway. This isn't a life you raise children into, Sherlock."

They stare at each other in the mirror, him studying her, her studying him right back so she doesn't have to study herself, doesn't have to listen to her insides. She wanted children once. That was the plan. Find a man, have a few children. Maybe a dog. She hates dogs, but she would have gotten one. Out in the country, of course. Can't really have dogs in London.

It's a dream buried in the sand, washed away in blood, drowned in the Thames, stabbed to death in a dark alley, almost blown up in a public pool. No-one in this life is ever going to call John Watson 'Mum'. She thinks she's okay with that.

She's not the person she was when she made those plans and the man she's chosen to share her life with is not the one she would have even looked at, at the age of twenty. And yet here they are, entwined and entangled and still somehow utterly separate, like trees whose roots grow into each other, but whose crowns remain separate.

Oh God, she thinks, suddenly and brightly, she's being completely ridiculous inside her own head. Sherlock would laugh so hard if he could hear her.

But he can't, so he simply pushes away from the door and puts himself against her back. He feels cool after so long in the hot room, and dry and he smells a bit of dead things and chemicals. He's close enough for her back to touch his front and then one of his pale hands comes snaking around her waist, under her arm, and spreads on her stomach like a spider, or an octopus.

It spreads there, covering her navel, cool and too familiar. Sherlock rarely touches people voluntarily, and never like this. He rests his chin on her head and meets her gaze again in the glass after looking at his hand for a long moment.

"You would make a good mother," he says.

"Would," she allows. "Won't."

He tilts his head, nose against her ear suddenly, whispering, "I'm sorry."

She laughs and resists the urge to place her hand on top of his, knowing that trying to keep the touch will make him take it away. "No, you're not."

He smiles at her in the mirror, pale and blindingly beautiful, in something that she thinks might be gratitude. She has no idea for what.

"I'll be late for work," she tells him as she pushes forward and away from him. He watches her gather the clothes she brought in here hours ago. The jeans are fine, but she'll need a different blouse. This one has gone limp in the humidity. She grabs the bundle and turns to the door, leaving him standing in front of the mirror alone.

She's almost out the door when he says, "It's barely seven. You don't need to be in for another two hours."

She doesn't answer.

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End file.
